it’s not that they’re out of print (it lets me send the books to my address), it just says that certain items cannot be sent as Wish-List gifts. Never had this problem in the past, but perhaps something to bear in mind.

Hmmm. Interesting. That’s a new one. I have no idea how Amazon decides that.

Ah, I must have misread the information on secularactivism.org. Thanks, I’ll keep an eye out for that course if you decide to run it again next year.

Ps: it’s not that they’re out of print (it lets me send the books to my address), it just says that certain items cannot be sent as Wish-List gifts. Never had this problem in the past, but perhaps something to bear in mind.

Well that course started weeks before you posted, but I will teach it again (probably once a year).

But in answer to your question, it’s a collection of readings (occasionally videos), all of which you can review on your own time, and then a series of course questions each week (each week has a topic / goal), which you can answer or ignore (lots of people just do the readings/viewings, and sit back and read the discussions that ensue on the class online forum). You can also ask questions. Students discuss their answers and questions in the forums for all to follow, but my role is to comment and answer as much as I can. So you get to pick my brain, and get my thoughts on your assignment answers (my aim is to make sure you understand the material and concepts as best you can, and answer all the questions you may have). That is all standard text bulletin board, so you can visit and participate and pick up where you left off at your leisure.

The upshot, it’s all on your own schedule and time, and you can participate as much or as little as you want.

P.S. Some items on wishlists might be out of print or no longer available. I just haven’t purged my list in a while.

In terms of the online courses you’re offering, I was about to sign up for the course on ‘Thinking like a Historian’, but just wanted to ask what the nature of the course is. Is it a series of downloadable e-lectures, or will the course be in the form of live-streamed lectures, Q & A sessions, forums, and such? The site I was on did not provide many details. I am currently completing a degree, and so committing to streams with set times and such might be difficult for me.

Ps: tried to get a few things on your Amazon Wishlist, but a few of them seem not to be purchasable as Wish-list items from some reason (no idea what the problem is). Which particular text would be of the greatest use to you in the immediate sense?

Only in respect to peer review (by definition, all peer reviewed monographs meet peer reviewer requirements as to wording and content…otherwise peer review would be meaningless). But nothing I objected to (good peer review improves a book, and I had good reviewers).

I can’t speak for the SBL.

But the issue of how to define the competing hypotheses I tackle in detail in chs. 2 and 3 of OHJ (ch. 2 entirely on the hypothesis of historicity and what the minimal possible claim to that would be).

Oh. Right. My mistake! I forgot about that use of the term.

Yes, unlikely to ever get there, unless some group or conference gets together the cost of airfare to bring me out. I’m otherwise an easy get: booking info here.

As I’ve said before to many in Australia, the best you can do is try lobbying a national atheist or secularist or humanist org in Australia to bring me out–indeed, you can mention that several can team together to share costs, and I can tour among them (see booking page for details on that possibility), and definitely if any major conferences start getting organized there, you can do what you can to nominate me as a speaker in their line-up.

Really, airfare is the only significant barrier. That, and some org that can afford it being interested enough.

I was far to ambiguous for my own good, alas I was meaning Oz as in Australia. I’ll hold off on the publisher for the moment and try Amazon and see what eventuates in that regard. If Australia isn’t on your radar any time soon, I’ll have to see if the future can bring me state side for a conference.

Was Paul’s Christianity about a man who lived 20 years earlier who was a divine savior who was said to rise from the dead, or was his Christianity about a divine Christ in heaven figure who was revealed to Paul in visions and in passages from the old testament? If it was about a man who recently lived and was thought to work miracles and rise from the dead, that would be a big deal, and Paul’s religion would surely look to this man and his miracles and teachings more than to the Christ figure found in scriptures. If Paul’s writings are not dominated by this man who had recently lived, then there was no human man who was the basis of Paul’s Christianity. Then you can go on to all the other OHJ debates knowing Paul didn’t talk about AHJ. The gospels would be from a later era and be based on an unknown oral tradition that was different from the known written tradition of those earlier writings of Paul.

I guess my question is is the HJ question framed as something that can be answered, or is it framed as something that can’t be completely answered, and would the Society of Biblical Literature be happier if the question had to be left with some doubt.

Hopefully the publisher didn’t insist on any wording inside the book.